Re: Social Contract GR's Affect on sarge

[tb@becket.net (Thomas Bushnell, BSG)]

Stephen Frost <sfrost@snowman.net> writes:

> No, he isn't.  He's attempting to be pragmatic and promoting the idea of
> having a useful distribution over a one which wouldn't be.

So in this hypothetical world, one in which a free operating system is
impossible, we will either stop using computers or we will have a
non-free operating system.

*At that point*, Debian will have to decide whether our reason for
existing has gone away, or whether we wish to become something
different: an organization which no longer is trying to make a free
operating system.  It will have become impossible to fulfill our
social contract (old or new), and that will be that.

(The reason I say *old or new* is because the old one applied the DFSG
to all software, and labelling a piece of software "firmware" doesn't
make it any less software, for the same reason that calling a dog's
tail a "leg" makes it into one.)

Thomas